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FinancialForce

Today, there is no manufacturing cloud ERP provider with the size or scale of Salesforce.com or Workday. Contrary to popular belief, this is not because the opportunity is small. Manufacturing still comprises a large percentage of US companies and is an enormous opportunity for cloud ERP. This post outlines the challenges that cloud ERP providers face and what it will take for them to dominate the market for manufacturing systems.

Traditional providers of ERP systems typically sought to expand their functional footprint to include complementary applications outside of core ERP. Now cloud ERP vendors are adopting a similar strategy, bringing significant benefits to buyers.

Oracle took another step in its strategy of growth by acquisition by announcing a bid for NetSuite. But apart from helping Oracle in its race with Salesforce.com to get to $10 billion in cloud revenues, what are the benefits of the deal to Oracle? How does it help NetSuite, and what does it mean to the broader marketplace? Looking at the big picture, there are certainly benefits, but there are also several concerns.

Sage is one of the world’s largest providers of business applications for small and midsize organizations. Now in the cloud it has taken a big step forward, launching Sage Live, a built-from-scratch accounting system on the Salesforce.com platform. This post outlines key features of Sage Live, the challenges it faces, and recommendations for potential buyers.

FinancialForce continues to show strong momentum in the cloud ERP market, and it is building out its product capabilities in interesting ways. In this post, we provide an update on FinancialForce, based on interviews we conducted with its executives at Dreamforce, the annual conference for users of Salesforce.com. We also provide recommendations for buyers considering FinancialForce.

Infor is doing interesting work in its CloudSuite initiative to offer industry-specific solutions deployed on the cloud. But it faces two challenges. First, it must convince a greater share of its 70,000 customers to upgrade to its latest versions. Then, if it does convince them, Infor will need to have the implementation resources trained and available to support those customer migrations. This post sums up the status of these initiatives with recommendations for Infor customers.

Salesforce.com is not only the industry’s most well-known cloud CRM system. It is also a platform for a variety of other software providers. This post outlines the latest developments with the four ERP providers building on the Salesforce platform: Kenandy, FinancialForce, Rootstock, and AscentERP. We conclude with a caveat for buyers.

Like the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, cloud vendors today are rushing into new territory to stake their claims. One provider that has joined the land rush is FinancialForce.com, which recently announced new branding to signal its claim in cloud ERP. This post provides an overview of the cloud ERP landscape and the latest vendor to stake a claim.